I remember being rather disturbed by the sad and lonely little knots of abortion opponents we sometimes encountered at demonstrations – often hollow-faced men with severe hair and very tightly-tied ties, standing in the rain next to some glum nuns. They perfectly encapsulated what we were fleeing from, the ordered, hierarchical, self-disciplined life of the suburbs, lawn-mowing, shoe-polishing, respectable, possibly even church-going. What if we were all to be dragged back into that world, compelled by a bawling baby to take out a mortgage, live in the provinces, become a commuter, sing hymns and acquire a garden gate? No, we were destined to live in the capital, child-free, lawn-free, hymn-free, unencumbered, without obligations to our parents, and the past, or to children, and the future. [ Peter Hitchens ] Deneen is a student of Alexis de Tocqueville, and part of his argument is classically Tocquevillian, that the liberal-democratic-capitalist matrix we all inhabit depends for it